Love Gone Mad Read Free

No wonder most surgeons retire by age sixty. So … at forty, he’s got twenty more years of cracking chests and mending hearts. Plenty can happen in twenty years, he thinks.
    Twenty years … I can’t think that far ahead … and I don’t want to think of the past .
    Steam rises from his soup in a vaporous cloud. It’s too hot to slurp. The bowl, the soup’s aroma, and the plastic tray remind him of the dorm food at Cornell; they bring back the verdant rolling hills of the Finger Lakes, rowing on Cayuga Lake and playing center field on the varsity baseball team. It’s amazing—Ithaca, New York—merely a whiff away.
    He glances across the table—eyeballs the woman. She’s staring down at a book; an untouched egg salad sandwich sits on her plate. A container of coffee sits nearby. It’s obviously cooled down—there’s no vapor. She’s wearing green surgical scrubs and a long white coat. Her name tag says, “Megan Haggarty, RN.” Beneath it, “Neonatal Intensive Care.”
    Adrian … do I know you …?
    That shock-like sensation jolts through Adrian. His legs tighten. Forget last night, he tells himself. It was a few moments of craziness in an otherwise sane world.
    He peers at Megan Haggarty. God, she’s gorgeous. Her face has the look of unbroken Celtic lineage—beautiful Irish features—unattainable beauty, he thinks. She’s in her early thirties, Adrian guesses. She has fiery red hair with an iridescent hint of blond and a coppery undertone. It looks silken soft and shines under the fluorescent lighting. Pulled back, it flows into a hair clip, perfectly framing her oval face. He can almost smell it through the curling soup vapor infiltrating his nostrils.
    Is blood rushing to his cheeks? Or is it the steaming-hot soup? Either way, he feels flushed.
    Megan Haggarty’s forehead is high; her cheekbones are prominent. Her nose is delicately sculpted, while her jaw is square, firm. Auburn eyebrows accentuate her forehead. Her skin is bone-white and looks creamy, luscious. What would it taste like? he wonders. Staring at her, he knows he’s incapable of subtlety.
    Her eyes flick up—past him. They’re hazel with emerald-green rings around the irises. He’s never seen such eyes—so soulful and sad in a way. She’s seen hard times, he thinks. It’s in those eyes. He could fall into them.
    She turns a page. Adrian realizes he might as well be a vapor wafting in a wind.
    God … she’s a work of art .
    He scans the book upside down, a skill he refined riding on subway trains in Manhattan years ago. In Cold Blood . Oh, right—Truman Capote. Four poor souls murdered by two madmen using a shotgun in the Kansas night.
    A shotgun. It reminds him of that bastard at King’s Corner. “Stairway to Heaven,” the guy’s piercing, gray eyes, and his quivering nostrils.
    I’ll be back .
    You gotta put that out of your mind. That was then; this is now .
    Megan Haggarty’s fingers are long and graceful, with perfectly shaped nails—no polish, just natural pink nail beds—with light half-moon crescents above the cuticles. And, the most important feature—the crucial one—no ring. Adrian wonders if it’s possible she’s not married, but he knows lots of nurses wear no jewelry while working in the hospital.
    Ring, no ring, married, living together, looking, hooking up, lost and found … it’s all complicated. Jesus, man … what’re you, Sherlock Holmes? Looking for clues, bits and pieces … trying to dope out this puzzle?
    Adrian waits for his soup to cool. He wonders if Megan Haggarty could possibly make him feel something—anything—because since the divorce from Peggy, he’s felt forever soured, emotionally mutilated, as though indifference runs thickly through him, slows his blood, and chills his heart. He knows he’s too young to feel this way; there’s too much to look forward to, yet life’s vividness seems drained, washed out.
    It occurs to Adrian that there could be something chemical in